On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Identity

Alexie’s poem explores the theme of identity. Individual identity is one focal point. The other passenger, the white woman, is directly identified by race and gender from the first line. If the “I” of the poem is believed to be a version of Alexie, the speaker would be seen as male, but most certainly Indigenous, from the beginning. Beyond that, there are glimpses of belief systems, education, and emotion, but ultimately, both passengers are representatives of their cultural identities.

The white woman is just that: an aspect of mainstream, colonizer culture. She is not a cartoon villain, but she does occupy a position of unquestioned privilege. The speaker is a Native American who exists in a liminal space and navigates complexities of identity. They are part of America, even while they simultaneously exist outside of it.

The poem ends with the speaker thinking about what to say and do the next time they are mistaken by “somebody from the enemy” (Line 37) for “one of their own” (Line 37). By not considering the possibility of an alternative experience or identity, “the enemy” (Line 37) makes foolish assumptions. The assumption of cultural dominance becomes an act of war when it consumes everything in its wake.

The identity of place is another facet of the theme. The poem moves through a double landscape. The land of the distant past is there if, like the speaker, one knows to look for it. Walden Pond used to have another name and had ties to ancient lived stories. Reservations are artificial and created out of contested spaces. Modern cities take their names from people and places who do not necessarily have any power there. The train travels by landmarks of history that can be interpreted in more ways than one.

The poem invites readers to consider their own identities and reveals the necessity of cultivating a consistent awareness that identity is not a monolith. Ignoring diversity impoverishes us all, it says.

Stories

“On the Amtrak” examines the power of storytelling. History is a form of story. The white woman knows one version of history—the dominant narrative. This is the history passed down in American textbooks and travel brochures. Like the woman, it is at best happily ignorant, smiling and delighted, and at worst engaged in the active erasure of competing stories like those of indigenous peoples. The 15,000 years and more of lived stories are unknown by far too many. Walden Pond becomes an item on a list of points of interest, losing ties to real intellect and emotion, while the hundreds of other places are rendered virtually invisible.

The assertion that history is written by the victors may be something of a cliché, but it holds truth, too. Controlling the narrative of a space means setting standards and deciding what experiences and values will be nurtured. In turn, the poem is an act of storytelling and is thus an assertion of power. It reclaims space and disrupts the narrative. There is more than one Walden Pond, the speaker insists, undermining the symbolic meaning of a quintessentially American perspective on nature. Similarly, there is the house “museumed on the hill” (Line 11) and the thousands of years of counternarratives, all located in the same place, like a spatial palimpsest.

Power

Power is a major theme in the poem. “On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City” considers who holds the power to sustain their version of what America is, was, and will be. The act of reading a landscape through a different lens—the speaker sees “tribal stories / whose architecture is 15,000 years older” (Lines 8-9) than the two-hundred-year-old house the woman calls out—undermines the dominant narrative by offering an alternative. The large-scale look at power continues through an interrogation of Walden Pond and further discussion of the competing stories of colonized America and Indigenous peoples.

A smaller-scale exploration occurs in the train car, between the passengers. The woman breaks silence in the car and imposes herself on the speaker. The poem opens with a directive: “The white woman across the aisle from me says ‘Look, / look at all the history” (Lines 1-2).

Like the bigger picture, this scene can be read in more than one way. On the one hand the woman is delivering a monologue. She does not seem to wait for, nor require, an answer to her questions and observations. She bulldozes ahead and never stops talking. But what could be an act of conversational aggression does not really seem to bother the speaker.

The speaker listens to her, observing what she points out, but keeping their opinions private. The interior dialogue is filled with strong emotion, for instance, the speaker swears about Walden and Don Henley saying “I’m tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too” (Line 22). The speaker cares deeply about history and identity but indicates they have been open to the possibility of learning more history in their “few days / back East” (Lines 6-7), despite the lack of reciprocal interest. The speaker knows details, and has not just focused on one narrative.

But throughout her speech, the speaker chooses to keep silent. It is a conscious choice, part of which is courtesy. The speaker does not want to break her heart by telling her Walden Pond is not unique (Lines 13-16). She seems happy about her fictions, and as the speaker notes, she is an elder. The speaker pays her a considerable amount of attention and thinks about who she is, offering her respect that is not met in kind.

Silence is the speaker’s choice. By not contradicting the woman, and entering into a debate, the poet, via the speaker, can control some of their story. As such, Alexie carves out a space for a new narrative, where his speaker, “as all Indians have done” makes “plans / for what I would do and say the next time/somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own” (Lines 34-37).